The present invention relates to a method, a device and a computer program for setting up communication links in a radio communication system comprising at least one base station and user terminals, at least some of which are implemented as multihop capable ad hoc nodes.
M. Lott et al. “Hierarchical Cellular Multihop Networks”, EPMCC 2003, March 2003 proposes a combination of a cellular mobile communication system, based on an infrastructure of fixed base stations, and a self-organizing WLAN ad hoc mobile communication system. The base stations provide access to a TCP/IP protocol based backbone network. The WLAN communication system has fixed Internet access points. The range of coverage for establishing communication links between an access point and a WLAN mobile node can be extended by fixed or mobile multihop capable nodes. The publication explains that a multihop communication link requires more network capacity than a direct communication link, as corresponding transmission resources are required for each sub-connection making up the complete multihop link.
G. Cristache et al. “Aspects for the integration of ad-hoc and cellular networks”, 3rd Scandinavian Workshop on Wireless Ad-hoc Networks, Stockholm, May 6-7 2003 proposes in particular using an ad hoc network function directly for extending the coverage and increasing the cell capacity of a cellular mobile communication system such as UMTS without providing access points, mobile terminals of the UMTS network being implemented in such a way that a communication link is established from the base station via a mobile terminal to another mobile terminal.
Coverage extension therefore increases the network radius or rather the cell radius so that even terminals farther from a communication network or more precisely from a base station can be supplied by said network or more precisely the relevant base station. However, this has a negative effect on the bandwidth of the network as a whole.